To summarize my time in Sogndal feels like an attempt to define the undefinable, to measure the immeasurable. I spent the last hour reading over each entry I’ve written during my time here, and it is difficult both to explain the impact this pilgrimage has had and will continue to have on my life, and also to summon the requisite courage to accept that it is over.
Sogndal is, at the end of all things, just a city. It’s a place where people live. They take part in activities both ordinary and extraordinary that mimic or at least supplement those seen in millions of other cities around the world. But this is, of course, something of a straw man without introducing the context that lends this particular city, in this particular place, with these particular people, its magnetism when it concerns my family.
I will readily admit I’ve historically struggled to understand my father’s all-consuming fascination with Sogndal. This is not to suggest I have fully dismissed my heritage; I have always considered my name a badge of Norwegian pride and have delighted in wielding it (despite my home country’s insistence on mispronouncing it). But Sogndal has long been something of a fairytale setting for me. Pictures tell stories, of course, but they can’t immerse you in the reality of a place; my mental rendering has always remained incomplete. And it can be challenging to fully exalt a city and a people you can only fragmentarily imagine.
I’ve forced my father to read three paragraphs to give the next line the anticipation and the gravitas it deserves:
Now I understand.
I don’t know if it’s my advancing age, or the seismic jolt of witnessing the scenery, or the mellifluous welcome we’ve received at every doorstep–most likely it is the amalgamation of the three–but I will leave here feeling like I am departing a second home. I have come to prize the knowledge I have gained about my ancestry and the countless people who shaped it. While the link is distant by American standards, the connection I share by blood with so many of Sogndal’s residents has made conversation easy; as an introvert, I often shudder at the chore-like process of meeting new people, but here, I felt eager to bond with each new acquaintance, a task made even easier by evidently reciprocated feelings. I am overjoyed to bring these new ties home with me, and hope this is not the last opportunity I will have to nurture them.
Unequivocally, I am very lucky. I cannot process this experience without pausing to acknowledge the many aspects of it that I do not take for granted. These people had no obligation or moral imperative to welcome me as they did; I am family, yes, but I have seen enough of life to know that does not guarantee successful camaraderie. To have access to any information at all about my heritage and my ancestors is itself a privilege, and I not only have ingress to a sizable slice of that information in a single area in Norway, but also have a parent who has painstakingly compiled a veritable smorgasbord of that information for my absorption whenever the mood strikes. I wish that everyone had it so, and the recognition that they do not is only further fuel for my appreciation.
To my many relatives in Sogndal who may be reading this, I have enjoyed meeting you more than I can express. I felt in the past that perhaps my father was overstated in his adulating praise for all of you–I thought surely no group of people could be this kind!–but, happily, I was wrong. You took me into your homes, you broke bread with me, you exchanged stories, and you welcomed me as one of your own. You have blessed me with your humanity and your charity, and my life is illimitably greater for it. Please do not hesitate to keep in touch, and I will return the favor. I leave a piece of my heart in this city, and entrust you to keep it until my hopeful return. Tusen, tusen, tusen takk for alt.
I leave this place with the monumental gift of belonging to something greater than myself. I close with borrowed words, as mine fail me.
We are a product of the immense torque that propels this universe. We are not individuals but a great accumulation of all that lived before.
–Tanya Tagaq, “Split Tooth”
Until next time, Sogndal. Keep the light on for me.
Where the Waterfalls Mean Home 